Neonates born prematurely and/or with certain disease conditions may have an impaired ability to feed orally. Attempting to orally feed a neonate with impaired ability may result in aspiration of the fluid, physically injuring the neonate. The ability to objectively assess a neonate's readiness and ability to take oral nutrition and avoid patient injury is the subject of extensive training, specialization, and controversy in the neonatal clinical community.
Previous efforts to detect and measure orofacial activity often involved a manual detection or the use of a bottle or pacifier device wired to a computer on a stand. Manual assessment of orofacial activity has a number of drawbacks including but not limited to the variance in the amount of motion (amplitude) and rhythm (frequency) as detected and determined from therapist to therapist, or even by the same individual. As a result, extensive and costly training and experience are required for a therapist to be proficient at providing manual stimulation and assessment.
Similarly, devices physically wired to a computing device have drawbacks as well. These include the requirement to relocate the patient to a position proximal to the computer which may be difficult or ill advised for some neonatal patients. Alternately, the computing device may be brought near the patient; however, this requires the introduction of bulky wheeled equipment into a potentially crowded and tranquil environment.
Therefore, a need exists for a highly portable, and compact automated system and method of using the system to assess a patient's natural NNS pattern and to provide precise and beneficial tactile stimulus to correct and organize the patients NNS pattern in a low-cost, handheld, NNS assessment device.